Erie St. Clair LHIN strategic plan for addictions and mental health in the works

Not everyone with an addiction needs to check into residential treatment to get clean, says the woman heading a plan to overhaul addictions care in the region.

But, said Dawn Maziak, residential treatment is exactly where most people in, Chatham-Kent, Sarnia-Lambton and Windsor-Essex seeking addictions help currently end up.

“Because that's pretty well most of the services we have available,” she said.

Meanwhile, addicts looking to get clean face five-day waits just to get assessed, then weeks or months for a spot in residential treatment.

And that's if they can figure out where to call to get assessed in the first place.

There's no such thing either as weekend and evening appointments, Maziak said, which throws up another barrier to people working but who need help breaking out of an addiction.

She’s looking to change all of that.

The design manager for mental health and addictions with the Erie St. Clair Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) recently presented a strategic plan for addictions care to LHIN board members.

One of its core principles: integrate assessment and referral services so there's no wrong door, with Chatham-Kent Health Alliance acting as a backup if other organizations can't handle the volume, she said.

It also calls for capping wait times to assessment at 72 hours, and hiring a lot more health professionals who can provide counselling and support in the community.

The idea, Maziak said, is so people battling addictions can get clean without leaving their homes, their jobs and their lives for weeks or months to attend residential rehab.

Some 80 per cent of people can manage without checking in, she said.

“We need to be able to kind of flip this on its head, have more counsellors and also be able to keep our tabs on where people are at within the system,” said Maziak.

Plans are also to find out at assessment if people are dealing with a lack of shelter or food, something that's not necessarily being asked currently, she said.

“If a client doesn't have food or a roof over their head, quite frankly they can call and be assessed by everybody (but) we're missing the whole point,” she said.

“They need those needs met first.”

In the future, plans are to update LHIN strategies for how mental health care is handled, and combine the two plans into one.

Maziak said she hopes provincial funding for addictions and mental health will arrive sometime in May and June, at which point she can put together a business plan for the board's approval on how everything will come together.

Part of the plan too, she said, is to roll out community supports across the region for withdrawal management, as what's been implemented in Sarnia-Lambton through Bluewater Health.

“There are some people who will never step through the doors of a detox, but they will if they knew they could do this at home, with support,” she said.

“And that's what we really want to be able to do.”

The LHIN, meanwhile, has requested up to $10 million from Ontario's Health Ministry to build a 24-bed detox and community withdrawal management services hub in Sarnia.